1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to tools for educating learning disabled individuals, particularly those individuals with reading disabilities such as dyslexia.
2. The Related Art
In 1990, the United States Department of Education issued a document entitled "GOALS 2000." This document was essentially an education blueprint containing six broad objectives to be accomplished by public schools throughout the country before the turn of the century. As exemplified by the following two of the objectives, academic excellence was the predominant theme of GOALS 2000:
(1) every individual in the United States shall be able to read and write by the year 2000; and PA1 (2) the United States will be "first" in the world in the subjects of science and math by the year 2000. PA1 (1) supporting regular classroom teachers since reading and writing becomes easier for learning disabled students; PA1 (2) immediately freeing a regular teacher's time and energy for helping other students, creating and teaching the lesson, handling routine classroom activities, etc.; and PA1 (3) relieving regular teachers' stress of not being specially trained to help learning disabled students. PA1 (1) endorses the academic goals and objectives of "regular" education; PA1 (2) enhances the likelihood of traditional academic achievement for students with learning disabilities; PA1 (3) allows infinite repetition of learning material without exposure to criticism from peers, teachers, or others; PA1 (4) eliminates the need to modify or reduce regular assignments for students with learning disabilities; PA1 (5) encourages students to self monitor and expand the creative scope of their work; and PA1 (6) teaches the value of working to perfection by allowing easy corrections, modifications, and redrafts. PA1 (1) spreads the load of educating learning disabled students to a wider network of professionals and educational resources; PA1 (2) doesn't require schools to provide extensive retraining for teachers, revisions to regular curriculums, the development of alternative curriculum, or expanding special needs services; PA1 (3) doesn't require parents to pay for private tutoring; PA1 (4) increases awareness of the impact of learning disabilities and provides a range of opportunities for all to respond positively to the problem; PA1 (5) connects students to an ever widening circle of support. PA1 (1) reinstating parents as an integral support to their child's education; PA1 (2) exposing learning disabled students to a complete curriculum so that they can become better educated workers; PA1 (3) introducing students and parents to invaluable technological skills that can be useful in all aspects of modern life; PA1 (4) reducing the likelihood of low self-esteem and poor job preparation which are closely linked to secondary behavioral manifestations like conduct disorders, delinquency, and crime and increased need for expensive education, psychological, medical, social, and judicial interventions.
Each state was instructed to generate an outline of corresponding state-level objectives and to detail their plan for actualizing the national goals. States have responded with their intentions to turn out students who are competent workers, contributing citizens, and who will be able to effectively compete in a global economy.
The education climate established by GOALS 2000 has resulted in a re-popularization of the "3 R's" and a wave of teachers enthusiastically returning to more traditional classroom objectives, all of which have been endorsed at the highest administrative and legislative levels. Student performance indicators and scores on standardized achievement tests have become an integral part of professional evaluations of classroom teachers and in many cases the benchmark upon which to base their raises and retention. In some states, school administrators receive personal financial incentives based upon similar data. These developments, while commendable and well-intended, have produced a motivation to shuffle students who are less capable performers (particularly test takers) onto other teachers, different schools, or into programs where their work will not be calculated into the overall picture of performance. Clearly, such motivation is rudimentary and endemic.
In terms of students, the amount of information and the pace with which it is presented in schools has never been greater; the competition to access further or higher educational opportunities begins earlier and has never been more fierce. Furthermore, jobs such as welding, plumbing, truck driving, etc., largely independent of language skills and once considered as viable options for poor readers and spellers, are often obtainable now only through rigorous training courses that rely on written manuals and paper and pencil tests.
Clearly, these are times of great emphasis on traditional academic achievement, and for students who cannot adequately cope with the fundamental skills of reading and writing necessary to acquire an education, the consequences could not be more far reaching than they are today. Learning disabled individuals, particularly those with reading impairments, are thus clearly disadvantaged in most educational environments. Assistive technology is currently available that can significantly improve learning disabled students' access to the instructional material they require. However, the technology is often ignored since this type of assistance is viewed as being too expensive and this group of individuals is usually considered as being the least needy in terms of the spectrum of needs exhibited throughout the special education population as a whole. As a result, the public school interventions for students with learning disabilities that have been generated over the last twenty years have been notoriously ineffective.
Strategies used to support students with learning disabilities or dyslexia can generally be sorted into two categories that reflect either a "remediation" or an "accommodation" approach toward the special educational needs of these students.
The remediation approach tends to target the student's difficulty with learning and is characterized by carefully selecting and precisely applying techniques to remediate areas that are considered deficient. All too often, however, the results of this approach is that students fall further and further behind the academic achievement level of their peers in the regular classroom. Research reveals that a learning disabled student beginning a remedial education program in the fourth grade who reads at a 2.0 grade level can be expected to improve at a rate of only 0.4 grades per year over the next three years. Margolis & Michaels, Transition Strategies for Persons with Learning Disabilities, p. 242 (1993). It can therefore be anticipated that after three years the student will enter the seventh grade at only a 3.2 grade level.
In contrast to the remedial approach, the accommodation approach focuses on student strengths and is based on the premise that students should work with material that is age and grade level appropriate but modified in ways that will foster their success. For example, students may have shortened assignments, fewer spelling words, more time to complete their work, or be provided with tape recorded textbooks. Teachers might base the students' grades on different standards of work or alternative kinds of student products. The accommodation approach is intended to protect self esteem, but when a weakness in learning is unaddressed or avoided, students may eventually find it impossible to tackle complex information or skills and lack exposure to experiences that are essential to their success beyond school doors.
One alternative attempt to teach learning disabled individuals, such as dyslexic children, to read and write is a "paired reading" technique developed by one of the present inventors, Lynda Morris, Ph.D. Dr. Morris's technique is somewhat of a merger of the remedial and accommodation approaches, and is based on the "Neurological Impress Method" developed by Heckelman in 1965. Here, whole words are read aloud to and with the individual while the individual uses his/her finger to follow along with the text that being vocalized. The reading material is selected in accordance with the interest and age of the individual rather than the individual's reading level. This technique is a one-on-one approach that encourages individuals to read at a pace that optimizes their comprehension, and to acquire information that is relevant to their current needs. However, this method is not suitable for classroom instruction since student/teacher ratios seldom permit such individualized attention.
The discovery that computer technology can accomplish the merger of the remediation and accommodation approaches with expeditious results forms the basis for the present invention. This invention addresses the urgent need for a better way to educate this group of students in public schools by:
The present invention further responds to the needs of learning disabled students who are educated in these competitive times, because it:
Financial limitations have probably never been more apparent in educational circles than they are today. When Public Law No. 940142 was passed twenty years ago, schools were not allowed to restrict programs for special needs students because of economics. However, the economic argument is steadily creeping into current acceptability. School administrators are being given wider discretion and autonomy over their special education funds and frugality, while necessary, is also being noted by government officials and the general public.
The acquisition of equipment and software for this invention is a one-time cost to schools since the system is infinitely adaptable to new textbooks, different teachers, and the written curriculum for any discipline including mathematics. The program setup and training course is intentionally organized to help schools offer the program with its current staff and the resourced assistance of fellow students, parent volunteers, and community assets. In some locations, large corporations have offered to donate used laptop computers for local programs. This invention responds to thriftiness in education because it:
There are fewer and fewer real world opportunities or alternatives for a person who is unable to adequately read and write. Perhaps no one realizes this as unmistakenly as the parents of learning disabled youngsters. When these parents deal with schools, they usually find themselves in a "Catch 22" situation, knowing that their child is being given "watered down" assignments, "hollow" grades and social promotions, or standing by and watching helplessly as their child fails if academic achievement is conceived and measured in a traditional sense. Parents who would normally recognize and emphasize the importance of getting a good education are becoming ever more suspicious and even hostile toward schools and teachers because of this impasse.
It is morally and ethically unacceptable for our society to continue to squander the tremendous human potential of learning disabled students. Statistics from prison and welfare populations reveal that only the most resilient learning disabled students are even surviving, much less flourishing, under the current educational system. This invention addresses both the immediate and the future needs of learning disabled individuals in our society by:
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system for educating individuals with learning disabilities that is self-remediating, and that requires little if any modification to the instructional materials or methods being used by the regular classroom teacher.
It is a further object to provide such a system that is compact and mobile so as to facilitate use in a classroom environment as well as at home and in a wider community in general.
It is a still further object to provide such a system that avoids drawing attention to the learning disabled individual in a classroom, and is fully inclusionary in its appearance and use.
It is also an object to provide a system that is responsive to individual needs so that it can be used to access any reading and writing activity and, as a result, make learning a way of life for students who have learning disabilities.
It is a further object of this invention to offer a wide range of supportive options so that the level of assistance needed is a decision left to the initiative of the individual student at every opportunity thus encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning and level of achievement.
It is still further an object to efficiently and economically provide an educational experience for learning disabled students that centers on their individual needs and that will release their potential to contribute positively to our society.